The Gray
by MeriCheri
Summary: Two quirky girls from the real world unwillingly find themselves in Yugioh and must hit the ground running and struggle to save the world, and the YGO characters, from a disaster they unknowingly caused. Sometimes, life just sucks. OCxBakura, OCxSeto
1. Well, No One's Perfect

**The Gray**

**Chapter One: No One's Perfect**

**Timeline:**Takes place after the end of the series and the Millennium Items are destroyed. Atem and the spirit of the ring make an appearance, however.

**Summary:**Two quirky girls from the real world find themselves in Yugioh and must hit the ground running and struggle to save the world from a disaster they unknowingly caused.

**Pairings:** OCxBakura, OCxSeto, and possibly others.

Note: Bakura refers to Ryou Bakura, and not the spirit of the ring.

Introducing the OCs, our heroes. Well, kinda. Well, sorta. Well, not really. But they try.

…

Take a look: there is a universe, your universe perhaps, and inside this universe there are planets, and moons, and stars. There are other galaxies, misty nebulas, and shining comets, all of them occupying their place in the deep celestial sea. The planets gravitate around the area of the largest matter, rotating around the dark of space like heavy balls on stretched black fabric and stars burn hotly in the cold depths, slowly dying a solitary death out over trillions of millennia.

Pretend that a single universe, rife with galaxies and planets as colorful and as large as Jupiter, with rich night skies and rippling stardust, could be placed in a single object, kept safely and stored away. Pretend there are other universes, like yours, that you would never be able to reach in your own universe, no matter how long or far you searched, and that they too can be stored in a single object.

And in these universes, there are a multitude of other universes, things that could have been, things that might have happened, things that did happen but happened elsewhere. Filled inside these separate universes, with their little moons and their lonely asteroid belts, is an infinity of possible multiverses, an ever-growing set of alternate universes.

Pretend again that these separate universes with multiverses that stretched out in infinite directions, were contained in something like a die. There are regular six-sided die, for perhaps regular universes, universes of no general importance, or maybe there's twenty-sided die for universes with more space, or volume, or _possibility_. There might even be a die for the universe you live in, or perhaps another one where a card game can take your soul.

Now… take a step away and see all the numerous die, an ongoing googleplex, an infinite infinity, scattered on some sort of ever-long surface. It can be a table, or a rug, or a bed. It can be anything, it doesn't matter. What matters is that sometimes a hand from some unknown being—a god, a monster, a demon, who knows?—reaches out and takes a die, sometimes two, and rolls them.

What good are dice for anyway, if not for rolling? There's no point otherwise, really.

The dice fall, the universe inside hurtling downwards, or upwards, rocketing dangerously past any measurable speed, faster than a heartbeat, faster than light, faster than a _thought_, and then… they hit another surface, and roll. And the owner of the hand is satisfied.

Sometimes though, in that drop, propelled by a dangerous force and immeasurable speed, some universes might collide into each other, and despite the safety of the die, shatter, and crack. Innate, universal forces spin out of control, swallow entire worlds they never should have been able to touch, and sometimes the two universes combine. And then, sometimes, something even more interesting happens.

Can you understand this?

Do you understand?

Good. Because all of this is complete nonsense.

Well, at least part of it is. Who knows about the other part?

The _other_ version, well, it's hardly accurate and has no reliable witnesses, but it goes something like this:

The black desert sprawled across the landscape, nothing but towering black dunes and deep shadowy valleys for miles. And if you dug far enough down, the sand turned red.

This is where it began for Glitch and Kowareta who could no more tell you what they were doing sleeping in that desert than they could tell you what they were doing before they found themselves there; plucked by the hand of fate, or destiny, or the mysterious designs of the universe, or, as they came to call him, "that fucking jerk."

The wind was soft, gentle, warm. It stirred along the sand, rousing big, black scorpions that scampered along the midnight dunes searching for some kind of purchase away from the wind. There were no cacti and giant red-winged birds with sharp beaks patrolled the skies looking for their next meal.

One of the sleeping girls rolled over and scratched her arm.

Glitch, who had not always been known as Glitch, opened her eyes and saw the night.

"What the—?" she started. "Where am I?"

The red-headed girl scrambled to her feet, kicking sand up around her, and tripped over her still-slumbering companion in the process.

"What the hell?" said Kowareta, in a tangle of limbs, but quickly noticed the sand and the dark. She blinked, realization dawning on her, and then very slowly extricated herself from her friend. Kowareta stood up, brushing sand off her skirt.

"What _is_ this?" she wanted to know, hands on hips, frowning as she looked around.

"A desert," Glitch managed to say with a fair amount of confidence. "A very black one."

"Gee, really? If you hadn't told me I'd have never known."

"Well, someone needs to keep you up to date," Glitch told her, grinning, hazel eyes dancing with mischief.

Kowareta rolled her eyes and kicked a scorpion away from her feet. She wore big, black high top boots with multiple buckles on them, but they were so worn and mutilated and unpolished that they might as well have been a sheet of paper against the attack of a very determined scorpion. _Although_, she thought, noticing a twitching leg glued to the toe of her boot, _maybe not quite paper_. _Oh, yuck, bug goo. _

"What was that?" Glitch asked, jumping upright and staring at the ground.

"Scorpion," Kowareta said coolly, eyeing the sand for more.

"_Scorpion!_ Like… creepy-crawly scorpions with stabbity tails and poison and all those twitchy legs?"

"Are there any other kind? These ones are pretty big, so watch out. Also, they leak."

The purple-haired girl tried to wipe off her boot in the sand, which did nothing but cause sand to stick to the goo. Glitch watched the ground like a hawk, ready to stomp on any invading scorpions that dare threaten her.

"I don't think I've ever seen a black desert, have you?" Kowareta asked, watching the dunes. "I know that they're really just made of a bunch of eroded rock, so in theory if you eroded a ton of black rock you could have yourself a black desert, but I don't think I've ever seen one."

Then, as if on cue, both girls looked at the moon. And the moon looked back.

_ Misses Yvette Kanadawako and Raven Rashidenka, we welcome you._

The girls jumped at the voice and nearly knocked themselves over in a panic as they whirled around in search of its owner.

_Up here,_ said the voice, and the moon bounced. It was a melodic sort of voice, Kowareta noticed, that seemed to swell and dance inside your ribcage. Each syllable turned and dashed and flowed, and you could imagine flashes of color at the edges.

"Um, what?" Glitch said, one eye on the moon, the other looking out for scorpions.

_You _are_ Yvette and Raven, are you not?_ The voice of the moon asked, glowing softly.

"Um. No?" Glitch told it, feeling lightheaded. She was in some dreamworld in some black desert and the moon was talking to her. The redhead knew what it was like to be drunk, this wasn't how it felt, so it must be a dream, unless she'd ingested some sort of narcotic without knowing it. But what if it wasn't a dream and someone had kidnapped them and—

There!

A scorpion!

Cherry red boots shining in the moonlight, Glitch punted the scorpion deep into the valley of a nearby dune.

_What? _said the voice that bubbled hotly into her ears.

"We don't have silly names," explained Kowareta, apparently ignorant of her own.

The moon seemed to think about this.

_Are you kidding? Seriously? Then who the hell _are_ you two?_

Its voice fizzed and popped, and Glitch imagined bright yellow flashes of color.

Glitch and Kowareta exchanged glances.

"I'm Glitch," lied Glitch.

_And the other one?_ asked the moon sounding strangely worried. Glitch thought she could hear the faint, feathery sounds of pages being turned in some unknown, unseen book.

"You can call me… Kowareta," said Kowareta, who would argue that she hadn't technically lied based purely on word structure. "You _can_ call me Kowareta," she'd explain later, "but I never specifically stated that's my name."

But everyone would nail her on implication, Glitch would tell her.

_Um,_ said the moon in the sky appearing to shrink, _mind if I ask where you're from?_

"Earth?" suggested Kowareta.

"England," said Glitch.

"America?" continued Kowareta.

They looked at each other then added, "College?"

_Do you, either of you, have any, ah, super powers? Magic? Super-human strength? Electricity? Pyrokinesis? _

"I wish," Glitch retorted. "I'm British. Does that count?"

_Um,_ said the voice again. _Can you two hold on a minute? I think I—I need to—I'll be right back._

"I think it counts," the redhead told Kowareta, who rolled her eyes.

The moon disappeared and the world turned dark. Glitch shivered and Kowareta frowned. The sky was a wash of blue, black, and purple, dotted with small salt-stains of stars that glimmered coldly and unkindly. Soon both girls were shivering and thought they could hear the scuttle of black scorpion legs on sand they could not see. The girls held onto each other. The wind picked up.

The moon returned.

_Saaaay, _said the voice sounding like that _one_ person in every group of friends who no one really likes, _how do you feel about jumping worlds?_

The girls let go of each other.

"Where are we _now?_" Kowareta wanted to know, glaring at the moon. _A few more seconds and she'll fold her arms over her chest, scowl, and tap her foot,_ thought Glitch. _Oh, oh, oh, there she goes! Can she actually scare information out of a _moon?

Apparently so, as the moon seemed to hesitate, its form growing and shrinking as it attempted to answer.

_An in-between place, _it said, _an in-between world. A world between worlds. You see, it's my job, um, to move certain things from certain worlds and place them in others. You see, I believe your kind call me The Universe. I guess I, um, may have… not got it quite right and may have accidently caused some irreversible rips in the fabric of the worlds. But not to worry! I'll just ship you off to the new world, stitch up the equilibrium, and restore order._

Glitch stared at the moon.

"H-How long would we be there?" she asked incredulous. She didn't believe this. She didn't' believe any of it. She wasn't here, there wasn't a moon, and Kowareta hadn't just glared the moon into submission.

_Oh, _said the moon, _uh, forever, probably. _

"Forever!" shouted Glitch flailing her arms. The moon flinched and the stars rippled. "No way! You better fix this! I don't want to be stuck in some otherworld! Who knows what goes on there! And there might be scorpions! Lots and lots of scorpions!"

Glitch paused, looked around, then added, "And what kind of universe screws up?"

_Well, no one's perfect_, the Universe replied testily. _Look, I thought it was every being's dream to go to another world. Here's your chance! You can have a new life! A new home!_

"But I _like _my life," Glitch said.

_Oh dear,_ said the Universe, _then I've screwed up more than I thought._

"This is a dream," Glitch said aloud and to herself, fists clenched. "I am going to wake up in my room and I am going to do something excessively English once I do so. Like make tea."

"You do that anyway," Kowareta told her, scuffing a mutilated boot against the sand.

"I know," she said, "That way we'll know this was just a dream."

"Can I have some?"

"But you hate tea."

_Umm,_ interrupted the Universe, _look. I'm just going to stick you in the places Yvette and Raven were supposed to go. You look young enough to fit in. I'll… I'll give you a house, or something. Just… please don't be angry with me, and don't cause too much trouble, because then The Authority might get involved and I might get fired and then no one will be happy. I'll… I'll make it up to you, okay?_

"This isn't real," Glitch told herself.

"Dammit, this sucks," Kowareta said.

_Okay? _It said, _Umm. Alright then! Let's work some magic!_

Darkness pressed against the girls, swirling, bright flashes of light whizzed around them, in all sorts of colors—colors they didn't even recognize, and couldn't name, colors they hadn't even seen in Color Theory class. They could feel themselves being tugged along the sway of the dark, the color, and the light. White-hot pressure folded down on them as they was swept along.

_I'm sorry_, said The Universe as their eyelids closed. _Truly, I am._

And then the world vanished.

…

A/N: I'm kind of bummed I couldn't figure out a way to fit in the YGO characters in the first chapter, but I really hope the story itself was interesting enough to make up for that fact. They make it into the story next chapter for sure since I've already have about a quarter of it written up, I can divulge this for sure.

Thank you very much for reading! All the best to you all!

~MeriCheri~


	2. Denying the Inevitable

**The Gray**

**Chapter Two: Look, You're Just Denying the Inevitable**

In which the plot _moves_. Or likes to think it does. And you get the meet the bad guys, who are really just kind of like angry math geeks in night dresses who hate geometry, but unfortunately for you I couldn't afford any of the cooler villains. Also, chapter turned out longer than expected, mostly because Glitch and Kowareta don't really like to shut up.

Spoilers? Uh, Yami Yuugi's real name, I suppose, if someone doesn't know already.

Oh! And thank you for all the wonderful comments! I'm a bit unsure about parts of this chapter, so please feel free to tell me what you think. (But don't feel obligated!)

…

Travelers reach otherworlds all the time. The most common method is through dreams. Without form or void and just enough sense of self to keep a personal shape (in order not to be lost to the ethereal mists which would otherwise devour the shapeless), individuals can pass through even the most solid of barriers and take on the most extraordinary roles. Another popular method is through furniture such as wardrobes that lead to snowy, wintery lands of lions and witches, or windows and secret doorways that don't always lead to the same place twice or which might not even take you home.

There are tricks and songs and poems that instruct would-be world-hoppers on the proper way to prepare, journey, fight demons, and return alive from their otherworld adventures. Whether or not the sad statistic of those who have managed to return is caused merely by those travelers deciding to settle down or because they died horribly in the jaws of something Big and Nasty is something that's hard to keep a record of.

Not many people drop by to have a chat when dead, after all.

Sometimes, the unsuspecting world-hopper will be sucked right through their television and surf along a complicated mesh of electrical signals until they find themselves in unfamiliar territory. The same thing happens with computers, although those machines have a nasty penchant for sending their owners to exactly the last place they'd like to go. Computers are, after all, connected to the internet, which is an otherworld in itself which lurks under the disguise of network cables, complicated coding algorithms, and bloody-mindedness. Sometimes it just likes to screw with people.

World-hopping happens. It happens whether you get to your otherworld through your wardrobe or through your toilet; it happens, and if you're lucky, you end up on the other side unharmed and intact.

Glitch and Kowareta are not that lucky. Lucky people don't come through the other side feeling as though their intestines had been liquefied.

Glitch thought the next part had something to do with darkness and shadows and bones and fear. Kowareta, and she was fairly certain about it (although Kowareta is the kind of person who is nearly certain about everything) thought it had something to do with heartbeats, molecules and electricity. They might both be right or, which is more than likely, they could both be wrong.

In any case, shafted through the colorful vortex of the universe, their hearts _sludged_ to a halt, barely beating, and split into a thousand pieces (molecules, Kowareta said later. Bollucks, Glitch told her, who made it a point to be as English as she could.) You could hear the heartbeats though, each one coming only after an eternity of burning white-hot electrical impulses that barreled all the way through their veins to their fingertips. Someone screamed. They both screamed. There wasn't any sound. But you'd swear you could still hear the heartbeats hammering away in your ears as slow as an eternity until even your ear molecules tore apart and burst into sizzling colors until there was nothing.

And after the lights and the color and the fading purple smudges on the edge of vision, there was darkness. This is where the part with the bones came in, Glitch would say, whose certainty on this point was like a leaden block. This is the part where the bones (molecules, Kowareta objected, bone _molecules_) grew cold, became still, and _stretched past_ what felt like infinity. It was like, Glitch would confide, being caught in the undertow of this great dark, churning ocean and the pressure built and built inside your skull until the strain was too fierce. Except that you didn't have a skull, it was all dust and pain and there was this storm inside the body you thought you had but was all in pieces, whirling and twirling, swept along the dark that went on _forever_.

And then it was all gone. There was light and you could breathe.

Kowareta struggled to open her eyes. After what felt like a lifetime, she managed.

…And then coughed until there was blood on her hands.

"Ugh," she said, wondering how to operate her arms and legs in order to sit up. Then tried to get her head around the _concept_ of arms and legs and bones and a body.

Her eyelids fluttered.

"G-Glitch?"

She was inside a living room. An apartment, she guessed muzzily, although she could spot a window where gray light oozed in from the outside. Kowareta thought she could hear rain. Something felt like it was caught in her throat and the girl turned over onto her side and coughed deeply into her hands.

"Ngh," something said, sounding like a sea-sick version of Glitch. "Nnngh."

Kowareta spotted something blue before giving in to another bone-wracking cough.

"Whoa," someone said kindly, helping her sit up "careful there. World travel can be tough. Here, I can help."

Hands were suddenly on her shoulders and held her firmly until the shuddering stopped.

"There, all better."

Kowareta coughed at the universe in general, perhaps out of spite, which was one of her more defining characteristics.

"Okay. _Not _cool," said The Universe, brushing blood off his clothes. "Although _that's_ something that'll clear up on its own. I'd give it an hour or two."

"I'm going to throw up," said the something that might've been Glitch, miserably.

"Oh my," said the Universe in a tone of voice that suggested someone just told him that the cookies in the oven were burning and he was about to don his fuzzy pink oven mitts to save the day. "Let me direct you to the bathroom."

Kowareta saw that the blue thing—The Universe?—took hold of the something and walked it away. _Glitch?_ She wondered, unable to muster the energy to speak. She sank back to the floor, coughing. She felt numb. She couldn't even move her fingers. Closing her eyes, the girl thought she'd fallen asleep until she heard the rain again and started listened to it.

She lay there for what she thought might have been another century, her body feeling more and more solid the longer she lay there. She wondered if her bones really _had_ stretched past infinity or whether her ears had dissolved into nothing but their smallest elements and if, at this very moment, her body was recovering.

_Recovering from what?_ she thought irritably, suddenly angry at the hazy, dizzy memories. Other memories, the black desert, the shrinking moon, were coming back to her.

_From death_, another part of her answered. The solemn, silent part of her. The part that paid attention to things.

It felt like she had died. Kowareta had never died before, so she couldn't compare similar experiences side by side, but if anything felt like dying, well…

But it all seemed _silly_ now. She was alive, awake, breathing. The girl counted her next few breaths to make sure, and, with effort, reached down to take her pulse. One heartbeat, two heartbeat, three—and none of them pounded in her ears like a wall of sound that crushed her soul.

She wondered if she imagined it.

Except… except there was a small part of her that told her something was missing.

"Hullo?" someone said, interrupting her thoughts—The Universe.

"No," said Kowareta instantly. It was always good to have a firm stance, even if you didn't know _on what_ yet. She scowled.

"You know," said The Universe, "you'll have to open your eyes again eventually. You can't wait forever."

"Oh, you'd be surprised," Kowareta told him, eyes still closed, folding her arms over her chest determinedly.

"Look, you're just denying the inevitable."

The purple-haired girl was resolute.

"Is it working?"

"What? No! Get up, try not to cough, you've got blood all over the nice floor which will take _ages_ to get out and I don't think I brought any cleaning materials. Anyway, you should listen. It's important."

"…Where's Glitch?"

"I'm here," Glitch said quietly from the corner of the room.

The purple-haired girl opened her eyes and fought to sit up. The Universe was gazing down at her and, Kowareta realized, embodied the "something blue" she had spotted earlier. He had blue hair that was gelled and spiked and wore a menagerie of tiger-headed, serpent-bodied, and raven-engraved rings on his fingers. His arms were swathed in intricately-carved pieces of metal—bracelets with tangling trees cut in where ruby-eyed eagles soared in the background. His hands twitched nervously and an anxious smile sat on his face when he looked at her.

Kowareta stared at him while he twiddled his clinking thumbs.

"You…" she started, rage and confusion bubbling inside her.

"…Yes?" asked The Universe, twiddling his thumbs faster, appearing anxious.

"You… your boots are mismatched," Kowareta finished lamely. Why was it so _tiring_ to get angry. Her body didn't want to move. Her nerves pricked and the sensation of touch burned. She had to fight her body just to look around.

"Ah," said The Universe, inspecting his feet, "so they are."

"That's a really nasty-ass sofa," Kowareta said, just spotting a ratty ugly-colored cushioned sofa that Glitch was sitting on.

"Yeah," said the redhead, who was leaning forward, feet planted firmly on the ground with her hands clasped in her lap. She looked as though she was prepared to put her head in her hands at any minute. Kowareta thought she looked as exhausted as she felt.

"What color _is_ that?" the purple-haired girl continued, giving the sofa a scathing look.

"Nausea," Glitch answered, putting her head in her hands. "Mostly because I threw up on part of it. But I think it was pretty nausea-colored before that, too."

Parts of her tight-fitting jeans were nausea-colored too, if that was the case.

"Girls!" said The Universe. "I have to explain The Rules to you and we're late already!"

The girls fell silent. From the sofa, Glitch painfully removed her hands and groggily watched The Universe like a zombie might watch porn: completely uninterested and wondering if there are any brains involved.

The Universe no longer resembled a moon, the girls knew this, roughly—after the disorienting experience of crossing worlds, they were a bit slow on the uptake. But after a while they couldn't help but notice that his _teeth_ were as bright as moonlight. The girls sat, mesmerized, (zombified), watching the teeth as The Universe attempted to Explain It All. He talked (hands making nervous, complicated gestures) about The World, and then The Other Worlds, and then The Other _Other_ Worlds, and fell somewhere in a tangent about why buttered toast always lands butter side down. He went on to explain the multiverse along with all the alternate universes and managed to sneak in a metaphor involving the worlds, their directions, and how sometimes in theatre actors will fall sick or be assassinated and their understudies would come to shine, rocketing the show not necessarily in a new direction, but a slightly different one than the one the audience had been expecting.

"Wait," said Kowareta, "this involves us in some way, doesn't it?"

"Shush," said zombie Glitch, eyes following the moonlit teeth, "I want to hear more about the play."

The Universe swallowed. He talked about The Rules, which were upsetting, and then let slip nine out of twelve Mysteries of the Universe, which were useless, and then gave them the Spice of Life, which was apparently nutmeg.

"Which is why," the Universe continued, "I'm sending you off to high school."

"Wait," said both girls, snapping out of their trances. "_What?"_

The Universe held up two packages in his hands that he certainly wasn't holding a minute ago and smiled.

"They've got the _cutest_ pink uniforms."

The girls exchanged glances.

"He sounds like a soccer mom," Kowareta said.

Glitch blinked, stared for a bit, perked up then asked: "The kind of soccer mom that bakes cookies all day in her Hello Kitty apron and drives her kids to practice, or the soccer mom whose knees are armored in bandages, tears you a new one, and kicks the ball into the net?"

"Oh man, it's so hard to choose. Both. I bet he's on the hunt for the perfect Bundt cake recipe too."

"You know," interrupted The Universe prissily, unfolding one of the uniforms, "while I appreciate all your very human attempts to distract yourselves from the problem at hand through silly, unnecessary dialogue, I think your brains would be better engaged elsewhere. Besides, I'll have you know, I am _already_ in possession of the perfect Bundt cake recipe."

The Universe stared at them expectantly, frowning and tapping his foot like the ultimate matriarch.

"Seriously, it's flawless," he added.

"Impressive," Glitch told him, not entirely certain if she was being serious or not.

"Anyway," said The Universe, handing them the uniforms, "like I explained before, it's important for you to get into the roles of 'Yvette' and 'Raven', since, um, I stuck you in their places, which is why you need to go to school, and management doesn't know about the mix-up yet. Hopefully they never will."

Glitch frowned from the sofa, hands in her lap. "So, in the underbelly of corporate accounting, we're like 'the other set of books,' huh?"

"Why should we help _you _out?" Kowareta asked, scowling. Anger began to bubble to the surface again. She folded her arms over her chest again and glared, hard. "It's not our fault this happened. It was your mistake. I don't see why we should cover any of it up."

The Universe looked at them.

Later, Glitch and Kowareta would make fun of the blue-haired, nervous-handed Universe who chewed his nails, and comment that he probably went to things like book clubs and ice cream socials, but underneath it all, they trembled when they remembered they had seen the steel-eyed death-eating gaze he'd given them that day. The Universe paraded around in a blue-haired j-rocker's body with a soccer mom's mentality and a crafty corporate accountant's job, but underneath all that lurked an entire _universe_ of power and gravity. Universes weren't obligated to help anyone out, they weren't obligated to do anything other than what it was that universes did, which, the girls came to find out, was generally put people in their place and tell them where to stick it. When he frowned, it was the craggy and ancient, glacier-carved disapproval of the Grand Canyon; when he smiled, it was the bright, sapling-frying flash of electricity; and when he was angry, it was soul-stirring, world-frosting anger that stopped _centuries_ in their tracks. Late nights, in the future, while he knitted pink and yellow striped scarves in their cramped-as-hell kitchen and chatted happily, Glitch and Kowareta would remember the gaze that melted their insides and soldered their fate.

Without a word, both girls gathered the uniforms, shivered then changed.

Smiling, The Universe gave them directions, and ushered them out the apartment door, pressing a cheery yellow umbrella into Glitch's hand.

The girls looked from the landing and out into the rain.

Glitch opened the umbrella.

"I feel like my blood was just drained out of me," she said, shaking.

"You know what they say about consensual reality?" Kowareta asked, watching the rain.

"No means no?"

Kowareta rolled her eyes. "I'll consent that this is happening only if _you_ consent that this is happening."

They stared at the rain together, shivering.

"Deal," Glitch said.

Together, they walked off into the rain.

…

Ishizu Ishtar would say it began in ancient Egypt with the Millennium Items, that things happened because destiny had marked them for something special, something greater. Seto Kaiba would sneer, unconvinced, and ask who cared where it all began and insist what really mattered was where things ended up. Anzu would want to know why these kinds of things always involved _them_ and Jounouchi would tell her she was asking the wrong sort of questions.

Yuugi didn't know where it began. It might have started in the hot sands of Egypt, as Ishizu said, or it could have been sparked in the dark of space where all things had first taken form, like Rebecca thought. Where it began for _him_, however, was the bottom of a monstrous concrete staircase.

Strange things happened to Yuugi. It probably wasn't his fault. When all the great and mighty forces of the universe converged, Yugi Mouto, or his hair, had a habit of standing up.

Right then, though, it didn't matter. Anzu would tell him he remembered the details wrong, but that might have been because it was _Anzu_ who had been there with him when it happened. In Yuugi's opinion, if Anzu was with you and there were details to be noticed that didn't have anything to do with her, who would bother about them?

Sometimes though, when he lay in his bed at night and rewound the reel of memory, he thought, maybe, he had seen it right. Later, the other girls would tell him he might be right, that perhaps Anzu hadn't seen it the way he had, or at all, or that perhaps he wanted to remember it this way—because he didn't like what it meant if _the other one_ wasn't there like he remembered. Yuugi was never comforted by these words, but he liked hearing that it might have meant something.

Unedited, what Yuugi remembered went something like this:

"Have you seen Bakura lately? I think he's avoiding me."

Anzu held her umbrella up higher, a bright, pink shield against the rain, and shrugged her backpack in place as she walked up the steps. She gave Yuugi an appraising look.

"I think… ever since… _you know_, Egypt, he's been avoiding everyone. We should do something—let him know it's okay, things happened but we're still here, and he's still our friend. The Spirit's gone, after all."

Yuugi fell silent, eyes on the steps.

"—Of the Ring," Anzu corrected, mentally kicking herself. _Smooth move, Anzu,_ she thought. "Spirit of the Ring. Um. We should find out where he goes during lunch…"

They paused at the top of the steps. Yuugi watched his feet, his arms holding on to a pair of books that couldn't fit into his backpack. Anzu watched her hand on the railing until her gaze slipped and followed the railing to the bottom of the steps. _Keep things moving, Anzu, keep things moving_, she thought desperately. _Gotta keep things together._

Her gaze returned to her friend. Yuugi and the other Yuu—_Atem_, she corrected herself, letting her mind roll over the strange, unfamiliar name—Atem had been a team. They'd been friends, and they'd drawn people to them through some invisible connection that was close and warm. It was Yuugi's open-to-everyone friendship combined with… _Atem's_ steadfast determination that made the world, if just for a moment, stop and take notice, right here, right now—that made everything wrong come right again.

…And now? Atem was dead. What words could you possibly say to make anything better, to make anything right, about that?

Anzu put a hand on Yuugi's shoulder. The short teenager looked up, blonde bangs falling in front of his face.

_Sometimes nothing,_ Anzu decided before leaning down to hug him. It didn't matter that they were in front of the school or that anyone around could see them. It didn't matter that he was too short to hug comfortably, or that she was sure that anyone coming up the steps could probably see up her skirt. Right here, right now, nothing mattered more. Sometimes a hug is all you've got to give because you'd waste words trying to say something so _limitless_, because words would make everything _smaller_ than they really were.

"I'm okay, Anzu," Yuugi told her, his voice slightly muffled on account of being squashed into her chest. "Really."

They pulled apart. Yuugi looked away, blushing.

It happened then, even if Anzu told him it happened otherwise. Anzu said it might have been his footing on the slippery stairs, or maybe someone had bumped into him by accident from behind, or maybe a particularly strong gust of wind knocked him over (which even _she_ didn't believe), but whatever it was, it started then.

There had been this… thing, Yuugi would recall later. His mind was very particular about the word thing. It stood naked past the bottom of the stairs and had about the right number of limbs to be human, and was similarly shaped, but something about it stole the breath out of him as if it were a live, struggling creature and made his knees weak.

"Yuugi!"

He'd still been staring at it when he started falling and his mind raced behind his eyes. Thoughts are fast, or at least faster than people think, and with Yuugi, someone who is used to noticing small details in an instant where any longer and your soul could be taken, an instant is a very long time to notice something.

There were hands, and feet, all with the appropriate numbers of digits, but, and this was the part that hurt to remember, they were made out of something that wasn't quite right. It was almost as if there were shadows under its skin, shadows that crawled and shifted and turned, pulsing through the body like sinewy eels.

And there were stars, Yuugi thought firmly afterwards. He couldn't say why he thought so, but when it opened its mouth to grin at him, when it opened its eyes and light poured out, that was when Yuugi felt sick.

Then, another figure reached out, ghostly and concerned…

Books spilled out of his arms and hurtled down the stairs as Yuugi's hands grasped wildly for the side railings, caught one, and was wrenched from its support as his body was propelled madly by the force of his own momentum. His shoulder thundered into the hard bite of an angry stair and he was rolled over again, hitting his elbow on the next landing. In the turmoil of that moment, Yuugi was grateful to have learned the elbow defense from Jounouchi when the blonde-haired boy decided he'd need to learn to fall, as it was currently acting as a shield for his head against the forces of gravity. On his final rolling ascent, and consequently descent, he crashed into something soft, and a bit glittery, which collapsed and tumbled with him.

It was also a bit bony, Yuugi realized upon later, dazed, observation.

And made noise if he squished it trying to get up.

And grabbed him when all his thoughts caved in and his body fell forward.

Something clattered on the ground and the small teenager thought it might be Anzu's umbrella. From some perspective unknown to him, he saw the swirl of pale pink through the cold veil of rain. He heard footsteps come quickly, but cautiously, down the staircase. Yuugi tried to look upwards, eventually coming to the conclusion after much puzzled thought, that he was facing the wrong way.

"Yuugi!" Anzu's voice cried out.

"Ungh," said the soft, bony thing.

A hand was thrust in front of Yuugi's face, which the teenager took hesitantly after several long minutes. He wasn't about to trust his balance at the moment.

"Glitch?" asked a new voice, not the soft, bony thing.

"Kowareta?" asked another voice in strained, breathless tones that was much closer to the ground than the first. Yuugi quickly looked around, searching for the thing before clutching his head and closing his eyes in nausea.

Anzu was saying something comforting, hands on Yuugi, making sure he was alright. Yuugi wobbled on his feet a bit and then, blushing, pushed Anzu away gently. When his head was clear, Yuugi opened his eyes, blinked, then looked down.

And then apologized.

Then apologized again after he threw up.

"My friend," said Glitch from the ground, "You could not have described my day _any_ better."

…

The Gray gathered around the city street corner unseen and silent, at least for now. People walked through The Gray like they were ghosts, hands clutching umbrellas tightly and bodies shivering. The Gray didn't have any shape. Formless and immaterial, they were conscious non-shape with intellect instead of minds.

After a while it started to rain harder, pounding like a relentless fist on bright umbrellas as bruise-colored clouds stitched themselves across the sky as though it were an ugly, open wound. When it seemed the right time, and who knew when that was for things like The Gray, one spoke.

"This is unacceptable," it said. If it had a face, which it didn't, its features would have been arranged in the most likely way to express acute dissatisfaction.

Thunder rumbled overhead like a dragon turning in its sleep.

Another one spoke up, if it could be said that The Gray speak in the same way humans do: "It is not that big a matter. Once they are located, there should no trouble in returning them."

"That," said the first one, "is not the point. They are humans, and humans _meddle_. They complicate. And once they shape things they cannot be… unshaped."

It continued, "There is also the matter of the _other_ one."

There was a bubble of embarrassed silence, and if the Gray had feet, there would be much shuffling of such appendages. The first one that had spoken watched the others sternly and gave the impression this was a subject of much hard discussion.

A man unknowingly walked through the center of the Gray, shivered, and hurried home, nearly ignoring the streetlights in his haste.

"That was a mistake," a new Gray said, blooming into the circle of formless, shapeless intelligence like runny ink on paper. For lack of proper terminology, the other Gray stepped back.

"Mistakes should never happen," said the first Gray. "Mistakes lead to complications, which lead to even more complex shapes."

The newer Gray gave the equivalent to what, in human body language, would be a nod, and said, "It was a mistake, but it was not a mistake made by the Gray. It might be better to simplify the problem. This one and the last."

"Simplify?" asked the first Gray, "Right now there is unbalance. To simplify is to put the balance back in place, which means moving those two back before things are shaped."

"There is that, and then… there is the other way."

The new Gray explained. There was an argument, although the Gray don't have emotions to get angry with, then there were heated calculations with a kind of math humans had yet to discover. A pause came when all the integers had been distributed and the equations were balanced, and it was the kind of all-consuming, ear-deafening silence only the Gray could produce. Then a decision was reached.

"The factors are settled then," said the first Gray.

A while later, one by one, the Gray were gone as if they had never been there in the first place; which they hadn't, to the eyes of any ordinary streetwalker.

Dark, angry clouds shifted in the sky, scrabbling amongst each other and wind swept through streets, turning rain into bullets. From under the red and white awning of a nearby store, a black-haired woman peered carefully at the corner where the Gray had been.

Thunderous percussion drummed across the sky punctuated by brilliant notes of light and with a wary look over her shoulder, the woman crossed the street into the business district.

Ishizu Ishtar had things to do.

…

This chapter took a lot longer than I thought it would (and also turned out longer written down than I expected). I really want to apologize to you guys saying it wouldn't take so long to get up. I feel really silly now. But hooray for squooshing the canon characters in there finally!

Also, sorry if anything's confusing in this chapter. Things clear up as the story progresses, I swear.

Anyway, thanks a lot for reading!

~MeriCheri~


	3. No Wonder He Gets Picked On

**The Gray**

**Chapter Three: ****Καιρός (**_**kairos**_**)**

In which Bakura, Yami Bakura, and Kaiba make their appearances and The Plot Deepens. Or something like that.

It makes me angry that FFN keeps removing "section breakers" and I hate those long lines that they want you to insert into fics as a section breaker. It just feels so much more final than a couple dashes or a string of asterisks. Anyway, yeah, yeah, whine whine, I know. But if anyone has a good method for section breaks that aren't those really final lines, please tell me! I need your help.

Note: For those who are unfamiliar, I believe "Amane" is the name of Bakura's deceased sister. If I am incorrect, please inform me.

...

For Ryou Bakura it began a long time ago. It didn't begin when he started playing pen and paper role playing games with elves and ogres, nor did it begin with Yuugi and Duel Monsters although that certainly played its part. It didn't even begin when he met the otherworld girls. It began long ago with the car crash that killed his sister (and little bits inside himself), or with the Ring, or the first time he couldn't remember what he'd done that evening and started trapping little pieces of his life in torn-out, ink stained, and sometimes unremembered journal entries. It even continued today with all the pieces of shadow he caught in the mirror after the Ring was gone, or the snatches of color he saw in puddles walking home. It also began with a frying pan. But not yet. Not just yet. We're not there quite yet.

And, because Ryou understood stories, he'd say it began several places, in several whens, in many times, with more than one event. Life doesn't happen like a story. There isn't a beginning that signifies "this happened here" or "if this hadn't happened then today would be different." Stories are like that, but not life.

Life is much different.

Ryou wasn't sure he had a life anymore. It fled from him much the way he imagined Amane's spirit did when screaming metal crushed metal. As with many things (memories, friends, possessions, time) the Spirit of the Ring had taken with him Ryou's life and all the white-haired boy had been left with was fairy dust.

Ryou could build miniature palaces, figurines, and monsters to exact scales. He could draw maps, write stories, and make entire _worlds _breathe for others to live in and enjoy as if they were actually there. He could fasten himself a pair of goggles, or gauntlets, or greaves with minute, painstaking detail. The experience of creating a thing is a complex one, wrought with many first-time mistakes despite attentive craftsmanship, but in the end you have still made something that has come irrevocably from yourself.

Ryou Bakura built things, everything grew from beneath his fingertips and given life from the stories in his head, but he didn't think he could rebuild his life. Not anymore. He didn't even think he could _repair_ his life, if he still had one, after all the damage it had taken. You couldn't glue fairy dust back together into a recognizable shape. It just blew away, fell through your fingers.

But that was all before—

_"Host,"_ said the mirror-creature.

Bakura, eyes wide, looked up from the sink and into his bathroom mirror.

The mirror-creature looked back at him scornfully, arms folded across its chest.

"No," said Bakura, backing away. His hands shot up to grip the nonexistent Ring around his neck. It wasn't there, it was gone, _destroyed_.

_"You are nothing without me,"_ the image said, ghost-hands reaching out, a dark witch-smile spreading across its face.

"No," Bakura said again, remembering the way savage golden needles had drilled their way into his chest. He ran out of the room, slammed the door, and snatched up his school things. Bakura _also_ remembered seeing the Millennium Ring fall into the dark with the rest of the Items.

Ryou Bakura knew all about stories and how they didn't resemble real life. There were no white knights, no kind and helpful strangers, and definitely no happy endings. Sometimes, though, he wished things ended where you left them. Every chapter needed some sort of _conclusion_.

He ran all the way to school, panting, clinging desperately to fairy dust.

...

The problem with Yuugi Moutu was that you could be his friend after only five minutes of talking to him. In fact, if you failed to threaten his life, his friends, his grandfather, or his trading cards, you were likely stuck with him as a friend for life. Actually, you were probably still his friend even after you'd done these things because it was incredibly easy for the teenager to zero in on the other _obvious_ and _fantastic_ qualities you possessed that weren't actually there or that other people needed a microscope to see.

It was also likely that you could be his friend while trying to talk as little to him as possible.

"Er, hi," Yuugi said, somewhat optimistic.

"Uh," said Kowareta, "hullo."

They stood outside the girls' bathroom where Glitch had gone inside to wash the vomit from her clothes. Ordinarily, Kowareta could carry a conversation at least fifteen to twenty minutes before she lost interest in who she was speaking to, or before she ran out of things to say. However, nearly five minutes ago she became acutely aware that she was talking to an anime character and was currently having a bit of an internal conflict.

_Just look at that hair,_ she was thinking, _no wonder he gets picked on so much._

"Um," Yuugi tried, realizing the purple-haired girl was staring right through him.

_Say something nice,_ Kowareta continued, _he's staring at you like you're a crazy person. Which you are. Because you think you're in an anime. _

"I…" started the girl, "…like your dog collar. I wear stuff like it all the time."

"Oh," said Yuugi, hand reaching up to his neck where his collar was. "Thanks."

What he actually said was _"arigatou" _which, Kowareta knew, was Japanese. Which ordinarily wouldn't be a problem since Kowareta was very lucky to be nearly-fluent thanks to long-distant half-related Japanese relatives, _however_, the problem was that Glitch didn't know any. And the first thing out of her mouth, to Yuugi, had been "My friend, you could not describe my day any better," in _Japanese_. Kowareta knew for a fact her friend didn't know the word _hentai_ from _arigatou_.

_Forget the anime you think you're in,_ Kowareta thought scowling, folding her arms over her chest and her attention suddenly on the girls' bathroom door. _That's fucking weird. Something's up. Is Glitch an alien?_

"Here," Anzu was saying, appearing from a twist in the hallway, "the administration ladies gave me your schedules. You're in the same homeroom as us."

"How _convenient,_" said Kowareta, suspicion creeping into her voice as she took the slips of paper as though they were evil talisman.

Anzu gave her a funny look before turning to Yuugi who seemed to have taken a page from Kowareta and was staring into space.

"What about that thing you said you saw?"

Yuugi stared at Anzu.

"It was…" Yuugi began slowly, hands grasping at the air in front of him as if he could wrangle it for the words he wanted. "…A thing. There were… stars and… shadows. And then there was… well, I saw _him_."

The teenager looked away, embarrassed.

"Him?" Anzu asked, needing no confirmation as to who _he_ was. "Are you sure?"

Yuugi nodded slowly, shifting his gaze to his hands on the table as if looking up into his friend's face might make what he saw untrue.

"But it's been…" started Anzu, hand on Yuugi's shoulder. She tried again, "I mean, the Millennium Items, they're—"

"Gone," completed Yuugi miserably. "I know."

"Maybe you imagined it," Anzu said, "You stayed up late last night on those translations, didn't you? And you've been working on your paperwork for career day, right? There's the math test coming up too. You've just been under stress, you know?"

Yuugi nodded, but Kowareta didn't think Yuugi was as sure as Anzu sounded. It was the kind of conversation that sounded private, or at least the kind of conversation Kowareta would make sure was done in private, but neither of her companions seemed to mind the fact that she was there to listen in on them. Maybe they didn't care they sounded weird or it was more important to get it out of the way than to care what Kowareta thought.

As it was, it sounded important.

It was then Glitch came out of the bathroom, parts of her uniform still drying from where she scrubbed it down, and immediately jumped into conversation with the anime characters—nothing to do with shadows and ghosts or stars though. Glitch seemed to inspire normalcy and seemed to have little to no reservations about having just been tossed into crazy land where anime characters were living breathing vomiting people.

On the other hand, Glitch was one of those kinds of people that _happened_ to other people. You didn't meet a person like Glitch. That would imply things like celestial balance governed the universe. They didn't. Glitch came into people's lives much the same way whirlwinds tore their way through small towns.

Kowareta was thankful for it now though, since it took attention away from herself (and stopped people from thinking, "Wow, that girl's pretty quiet" and changed it to , "Whoa, Glitch is enthusiastic") and gave her time to collect her thoughts and find her sanity.

Kowareta could see Glitch happening to them right now, expressing opinions and asking questions and moving with energy that could power a city block.

'Let's get to our homeroom," Anzu said taking the lead.

...

Seto Kaiba was dreaming. He knew he was dreaming because he was barefoot in the sun-beaten sand and dressed in clothes from an entirely different time period. He stood underneath a clear blue sky staring at the dunes around him. It always started out like this, he remembered suddenly as he climbed a dune. He'd had this dream before. It always went something like this: he would climb to the top of a monstrous sand dune, angry wind blowing in his hair, and as soon as he reached the top of _this_ dune, he'd see an even taller one off in the distance. But then, for some reason, he'd turn back against the wind and a silvery voice would call out to him.

It would say: "Seto!"

Shielding his eyes with a hand, he would try to see past the bright light from the sun to make out the pale girl with long blue hair in the shadow at the bottom of the dune. She would suddenly raise an arm to him, as if gesturing for him to come down to meet her, and call out to him again.

"Seto, there's something very important I need to tell you."

He'd recognize the figure then, or his dream self would, and he'd turn around again, wind whipping at his back.

"No," he'd say, and proceed to walk away, bare feet burning in the sand.

"Wait!" the silvery voice would call out. "Please! Just listen!"

"No," he'd repeat and keep on walking.

And that's when he'd wake up, blue and silver swept into the corners of his mind like sand.

He awoke to the homeroom teacher introducing two new transfer students. He'd pulled an all-nighter yesterday and the day before to work on some more complicated algorithms for his most recent project and was groggy because of it. Additionally, he wasn't allowed to skip school as much ever since his new board of directors and his shareholders showed concern over his slipping education. How could he lead a company when he can't even get a basic education? It didn't seem to matter he had an intellect to rival university professors which allowed him to make brilliant inventions, remarkable hardware and software designs, nor that he had unmatchable business acumen. If he truly was brilliant, they said, then it shouldn't be a problem to pass his classes—or at least go to enough of them to satisfy the mandatory attendance policy.

As it was, he didn't even look up from his desk to see the new students. His thoughts were still clutching at the last remnants of his dreams. He had an exceptional memory, but for some reason he could never recall his most recent dreams, if or when he dreamt at all. He thought that maybe they were some sort of reoccurring dream but he couldn't be certain of that.

"Allow me to introduce Yvette Kanadawako and Raven Rashidenka," the teacher was saying, struggling to pronounce the names off the roster.

"A-Actually," one of them said, a self-conscious voice, "my name is Glitch."

"Oh," said the teacher, "well then what's your last name?"

"Um… Yvette?" said the girl. It sounded like the most unlikely name ever—Kaiba thought even the girl sounded somewhat unconvinced.

"And you?" asked the teacher to the other new student.

"Kowareta Raven," said the other girl flatly without missing a beat. Because he wasn't looking, Kaiba didn't catch the grimace when the girl said this.

When the new students were directed to their seats (none near him, all of those were already taken) he raised his head from the desk and sat up straight. He had a long few months ahead of him if he was going to come to school regularly and still finish his project deadlines. As the teacher began to write on the blackboard Seto could feel the post-all-nighter headache brewing. He barely even noticed when Bakura, one of Yuugi's friends, came into the classroom late and panting.

...

Glitch didn't think like normal people did, it probably had something to do with being English. So when she'd gotten thrown up on by an anime character and then made friends with him and Anzu, she didn't act much differently than she would have in real life if she'd met someone who wasn't an anime character.

This was, mostly, because she thought she'd finally gone crazy. It wasn't surprising because the redhead thought that it had been a long time coming. She'd been a bit of a different person when she was younger and even though she'd been through a lot and gotten better, she wasn't shocked if she had finally snapped and immersed herself in her head. Which happened to be full of Yu-Gi-Oh!

_Well_, Glitch thought, _there were worse worlds you could immerse yourself in when you've gone bonkers. Like Barney, maybe. Although, finding names that are worse than 'Glitch Yvette' might prove to be a challenge._

She could see poor Kowareta sitting a few seats away from her thinking really hard about what happened, because she liked to try to figure things out with reason and logic and rational thinking and silly things like that. Glitch already knew none of this would help. Because Glitch had gone crazy and delusional and so even Kowareta probably wasn't real anyway. The redhead briefly wondered if telling Kowareta she wasn't real would make her happy but decided against it since Kowareta was never happy with anything, even if she was a delusion.

And because no one was real and this was all some big dream, she might as well make the best of it. She thought she was doing pretty well, even when her old time anime-crush Ryou Bakura came into the room drenched in rain, until the teacher started writing on the board… in _Japanese_.

Glitch knew a lot about madness. She knew a lot about delusions. And what she knew was that in a delusion, or a hallucination, no one could know anything that you didn't know.

Everyone around her was speaking English…

…But they were all reading Japanese. Glitch didn't _know_ any Japanese. Except maybe _hentai_.

What was going on?

Glitch started to bite her nails.

She looked around and started watching all the other students. There was a kid in back who was picking his nose, apparently oblivious to the rest of the class. On the other side of the classroom, Anzu was propping her head up in her hand while doodling something in her notes. Ryou looked like he was determined not to look out the window or see his reflection in it for whatever reason.

She started to bite her nails so bad that they bled.

Her heart was pounding so hard she thought her ribcage was going to crack. She could feel the blood pump through her veins and she thought that her bones were stretching again, like when she came here. And she couldn't get away from the idea that she was going to be lost in the dark with stretching bones and a pounding, stabbing heart forever.

And it got worse once the teacher called on her a few times and she didn't know any answers because she couldn't read the board and couldn't pay any attention since her thoughts were going faster and faster and faster like a shooting star and she couldn't breathe. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't. Breathe.

And then she stopped breathing entirely when she couldn't look away from Ryou Bakura, because there was a shadow behind him, in the window, and it was going to eat him. It was going to eat him and she couldn't say anything because she couldn't breathe. And he couldn't do anything about it either because he was too busy looking at her not breathing to see that there was a shadow, dark like a bruise, _right behind him_ that was reaching, reaching, reaching…

Someone ended up taking her to the nurse's office, where a woman in white clothes had her lie down and asked her if she suffered from panic attacks often. When Glitch nodded the woman patted her head and told her it was okay and that she should just lie there until she felt better.

And Glitch wasn't even sure if she would feel better because it was all supposed to be some big delusion.

Right?

...

A/N: Looks like everyone except Anzu has gone a bit crazy this chapter. Eh heh. Whoops.

MeriCheri


	4. Expert PopUp Artists

**The Gray**

**Chapter four: Heartbeat**

If you thought last chapter had exposition, try this one.

Please tell me if you spot any mistakes and I will be sure to correct them immediately.

…

"This is stupid," the girl called Glitch was saying when Ryou snuck into the nurse's office during the lunch period. She was sitting on the medical bed at the edge of the room. Her bright red hair stood out among all the white.

"Our names?" asked her visitor, the purple-haired girl with the glasses, who sat in a creaky chair beside the bed. "Oh, I totally agree."

"Why didn't we just tell them our real ones?"

"I don't know, you're the one who lied to the moon guy first. I was following your lead."

Ryou couldn't make any sense of their conversation and instead of interrupting, continued to lean close to the wall and stare at his feet hoping neither of the girls would notice him. Maybe it was a bad idea to come here after all. But there had been something in the way she looked at him, well, looked _beyond_ him that drew him here. It was almost like she could see the shadow that he thought he saw in mirrors, and windows, and puddles. It was like she could see it… and, like the monster it was, it stole her breath.

And because of this, Ryou felt like he had to tell her something, warn her, do _something_, which is why he pushed his way through the lunchtime traffic in the hallways and…

…And hid in the corner of the room when he found her. Because he wasn't sure he had the _words_, wasn't sure he could put it all _together_ for her, because the _enormity _of what it all _meant_ was too great…

"Anyway," Glitch continued, "what I meant, was that us, being here, is… stupid. And crazy. I've gone mental and you're not real."

"You were having a panic attack," the other girl explained, rolling her eyes. "Are you feeling any better?"

"Panic attack you said?" the redhead rubbed her forehead, "I can't read Japanese, you know."

"Last time I checked you couldn't _speak_ it either," said the visitor.

"Huh? Am I speaking it now?"

"Yes."

Glitch appeared to think about this, and from what Bakura could see (kind of sort of trying not to look) her hands grasped the white sheets of the medical bed.

"You don't seem freaked out," the redhead told her visitor finally when her hands relaxed.

"It's a skill. I compartmentalize really well. Glitch, are you _sure _you're feeling better? If not, I'll walk you…" Glitch's friend cast about looking for the right word, "…home. To the home-thing, anyway."

Glitch sighed and drew her knees up to her chest. She put her head on her knees, making her look weak and vulnerable. Bakura felt his heart wrench—because he'd caused this. He shouldn't have come to school today, not when he knew that the great, dark _other _was back. He should have kept avoiding everyone, that was how he had to protect them from himself—from _him_. The _him_ who was supposed to be gone, the _him_, who was supposed to have disappeared, in the deep, dark, crumbling earth, with the rest of the millennium items.

"I don't know, Kowareta," Glitch carried on wearily, "I thought I saw this… _thing_. It was dark and creepy and nauseating. I swear it was gonna eat Bakura. It hovered behind him like… like a shadow."

It was then with some amount of shock Bakura realized he wasn't alone. Yuugi was standing remarkably close beside him listening in on Glitch and her visitor as well. Bakura nearly said something in his surprise, but Yuugi gave him a weak smile and shook his head. He walked towards the bed.

" Um. Hello?"

The girls looked up sharply, surprised to be interrupted.

"I saw a shadow too," Yuugi told them as Glitch caught sight of both of them. "N-Not in the classroom though, but earlier. Near the steps. It's why I fell on you."

Glitch stared at him in such a way that Bakura almost expected her to stop breathing again.

After a minute, she said, "And the vomit?"

Yuugi scratched his head, "Well, I was dizzy. I'm really sorry about that."

And suddenly the words were out before Bakura could even stop himself, "It's him."

And now everyone was looking at him while he covered his mouth with both hands, silent horror creeping over him. Had he just said that aloud? He shouldn't have. He shouldn't have come here. He endured the night thing before, and he should be able to do it again without getting others involved, without getting others hurt.

But it was too late. The words were already out there and Bakura couldn't take them back.

"Huh?" Glitch was saying. And that's when Yuugi got it and gave him a look that just said he _knew, _Bakura didn't even need to say anything because Yuugi _knew. _But the words came spilling out anyway.

"The spirit of the Ring. He's back. I—I saw him in my mirror today. He must be here. He talked to me."

The fact of the matter, Bakura found himself thinking as he looked at Yuugi (as Yuugi looked at him), is that Yuugi is a good person. It starts with the small things, which really aren't small at all, like how Yuugi is always there when you need him, or how he worries about you even when you're pretty sure no one is. It's in the way he sticks up for people who wouldn't give him the time of day otherwise, or the way he never backs down. It is the _sincerity_ in which Yuugi deals with people that, Bakura thinks, floors him. Yuugi is never afraid to be your friend, even in the hardest moments.

Even if _he's_ come back.

Bakura had almost forgotten that. While he had been busy avoiding his friends to protect them, he'd forgotten that.

The white-haired boy removed his hands from his mouth. He looked at the girls who were staring at him, and then to Yuugi, who clasped his hand in Bakura's with a serious expression.

"It's okay," he said. "I saw, well, you know, the other me, too. _He's _back too. He was there at the steps, reaching for me."

Yuugi looked away giving Bakura the impression that even Yuugi might not be sure what he saw. The white-haired boy looked at their clasped hands, and held on a little tighter. If anyone could understand, it would be Yuugi. He felt so _relieved_ and trusted and touched that he felt guilty for avoiding his friends in the first place.

"Guys?" the purple-haired girl interrupted with a tone of voice that sounded like it was waiting for an explanation.

Bakura suddenly remembered that the girls were even there. He gave a thin smile. How to explain…?

The purple-haired girl was frowning at them. She looked like, Bakura noticed, the kind of girl who frowned at _everyone_.

"Look," said Glitch, holding up a hand. "We're, uh, both having a really bad day today. Can you guys, um, explain all this… 'he, him, mirrors and shadows' stuff after school? Because if you could that'd be real cool. We've, uh, got our own, 'mirrors and shadows' stuff to figure out, alright? Better yet, can we talk about it tomorrow?"

"Oh," said Bakura, instantly going into polite autopilot. "Of course."

"We, uh—" started Glitch.

"_Died_," said Kowareta to herself quietly. She was watching her hands warily, almost like she was sure they'd dissipate if she wasn't careful enough.

"—Kinda just moved. To this universe. No, really. I'm not making this up. Well, actually, I might be, since I'm probably mental. Neither of us lived here before today."

"In Japan?" Bakura asked.

"Well, we have a Japan too, but it's not the _same_ Japan as this one."

"Like what?" Yuugi asked. "It didn't have schools or anything?"

"N-No. It's just not the same, alright?"

"Did—?"

"Are you well enough to come back to class?" Bakura asked, ever helpful and saving Glitch the trouble of explaining to them that they didn't really exist and were cartoons from a Japanese cartoon. Or comic. Or whatever. The redhead nodded to show that, yes, she was well enough to go back to class, and the four of them, Glitch, Kowareta, Yuugi, and Bakura went back together.

…

Kowareta was counting heartbeats in sets of twenty-five. Twenty-five was a relaxing number, like a quarter—four quarters and you had a hundred, and it was easy to break it down evenly if you needed to, into other quarters, of course. There was something solid and practical about the number twenty-five.

The more she tried to pay attention when she returned to class the more she worried about miscounting. Her logical mind told her that what she was doing was silly, unnecessary, and unreasonable but another part of said, "No, this is important" and wouldn't budge from the thought no matter how hard she tried to demystify the idea. She just didn't know why.

Kowareta had never, to her knowledge, had a panic attack and rarely, if ever, felt overly stressed. As she'd told Glitch, she was good at compartmentalizing. She liked to dissect complicated things down to their barest parts and solve problems with the most efficiency. Kowareta liked to be the specter behind the scenes and would rather figure out how everything ticks with logic and reasoning and really solid thinking before she took up her role in the play and ended it. Kowareta was good at _finishing_ things.

Which is part of the reason why she couldn't understand why she was so obsessed about counting heartbeats. Every logical part in her brain told her that everything was alright, there was no danger, and that surely world-jumping was something that could be easily fixed, dealt with, and squared away.

Kowareta thought she could accept the fact she appeared to be in Yugioh despite initial impressions. It was hard not to when all the characters were right there in front of you trying to interact with you. There was Yuugi, who'd decided he might have a go at throwing up on Glitch, and Anzu, who wasn't the big bitch fandom made her out to be, and Bakura, who seemed like he was trying to be as indistinct as possible. There was, goddamn, even Seto Kaiba, sitting there in the back looking like some type of undead zombie creature that needed to be put to rest. Or at least get a good night worth of sleep. There was even Joey—Jounouchi, really—who was loud, but in a good-natured sort of way and Otogi—who she'd never quite gotten used to calling Duke Devlin.

To be honest, it was hard not to believe she wasn't in Yugioh, when so much evidence said she was. And Kowareta was certainly fond of evidence.

Although…

Another part of her, the darker part, the deeper part, the part that saw things as they really were, the part of her that remembered everything, railed against her. It didn't rail against the fact she was in an anime, nor that she was, yes, indeed, in high school again, nor that everyone was speaking Japanese. It didn't point out to her that Yuugi's hair was ridiculous or even that, why, yes, Anzu certainly walked and moved with the grace of a dancer; or that even though he looked half-dead right now, Kowareta was pretty sure she found Seto Kaiba attractive—although that thought she was carefully ignoring, no matter how the deep, dark parts of her mind worked.

No, what Kowareta couldn't shake was the feeling that she'd died.

She couldn't shake the feeling that something in the world, possibly her place in it, had gone horribly wrong.

It made her sick.

She'd _died_, and _yet_…

So she counted heartbeats, and wondered what in the world, this world, could be used to her advantage if she was as dead as she thought she was. Mostly she wondered if she was really dead and what she was going to do about it.

…

When the girls got back to what they were calling "the home-thing" and found The Universe there, they felt they were entitled to an explanation. However, upon discovering him they soon found there was another issue they ought to bring up.

"Pink!" said Glitch, delighted.

"_Pink_," said Kowareta, not bothering to keep the disgust out of her voice.

The Universe stood in front of them, twitching, in coveralls and a giant paint roller.

"It's glittery!" Glitch said.

"Yes," said Kowareta, with feeling. She eyed the plastic over the floor. She was feeling sick again in an entirely different way. "It is."

The Universe stood in front of the shining, glittering, horrific pink wall, and gestured, with the paint roller.

"Do you like it?"

"Yes!" Glitch said, her entire situation forgotten. "Just look at the way that the hues and values change! It's _beautiful_. It makes me want to draw all over it."

"Like is not the word I would use to describe the intensity of my feelings," Kowareta said, almost hypnotized.

"Excellent!" said The Universe, "I knew you two would like it! I painted your rooms in the same color!"

This took a minute for both them.

"What?" asked Glitch. "Rooms?"

"Certainly," said The Universe and led them down a short, narrow corridor and opened a door.

"My God," said Glitch, who was religious.

"Oh, no," said Kowareta, who wasn't.

It was, indeed, a room in which the walls were pink and glittery and hypnotizing, but that wasn't all. What made the room special were the things that were in it. There was a bed crammed into the corner full of handmade quilts, a specific stuffed animal, a battered red laptop, and various containers and things in which Glitch was sure she knew what lay within. In the closet, even, there were clothes, _familiar_ clothes.

"This is all my stuff," she said, clutching at the handmade quilts.

And then, feeling like she was being led to the gallows, The Universe led Kowareta to another small room and opened it. An hour later, Glitch gently put a hand on her friend's shoulder.

Softly, she said, "You haven't even gone in yet."

As if startled from some sort of reverie, Kowareta looked at her friend, and said, "…Those quilts of yours…"

"The genuine articles," Glitch said. "The ones made by my mother."

"This is disturbing."

"No, Kowareta, you're confusing comforting things with creepy things again. Having things that are actually ours is comforting."

They stared into the room that held Kowareta's belongings. A purple comforter on the bed, a desk, a line of shoes and boots on the floor, and other small containers that Glitch knew would hold things only Kowareta was familiar with.

Kowareta still held back from going in, like a ghost afraid of its grave. She drew a ragged breath.

"No, it's creepy and disturbing, and I don't know how to tell you why. This stuff shouldn't be here. It's wrong."

Glitch shrugged to herself. If she was starting to see shadows standing behind people then perhaps Kowareta was allowed to feel crept out by her own things. The redhead's only worrisome question was how they got there—that they were _there_ didn't bother her. In any case, she wanted answers.

"What on earth is going on?" they asked The Universe, who had started painting the tiny kitchen. The Universe stared at them.

"I mean," Glitch went on, "We're in the Yugioh world, we used to be college freshman and now we're high school students, and I'm seeing horrible shadows! And why am I speaking Japanese? I don't hear myself speaking Japanese!"

The Universe put the paint roller down. Glitch kept going.

"Why is it that we've seemed to moved entire universes, switched into new schools, switched languages, and… and everything about this feels so wrong? How did our stuff get here? Why are _we_ here?"

Glitch started crying.

"We _died_," Kowareta said, staring at the wall.

The Universe twitched.

"You did not _die_," he said. The Universe bit his lip and fiddled with his coveralls. "And it's like… ah… terms humans might understand. It's like…"

The thumbs stopped twiddling. The Universe looked up, a level frown on his face. He clapped his hands together and then, slowly, opened them up like they were a book.

"A picture-book," he said, licking his lips, "with pop-outs. Let's pretend that all of us went out to buy a picture book but upon returning home realized that none of us got the one we'd expected. For one, the book is damaged, and all of the pop-outs are missing and there's nothing but this hole where they used to be—but you can see enough of the shape to know what they were supposed to be."

The girls watched the blue-haired universe pantomime inspecting a book whose pages are full of holes. He twirls a finger though one of the imaginary holes with an aghast look on his face and drops the book. He pauses for a dramatic moment, and then picks it up again looking at the book with a professional air.

"Let us also pretend that you are expert pop-up artists, and can therefore _see_ what the shape was supposed to be and can go about fixing it with your own pop-ups. That's what you need to do. This world has a shape, this world has a story, and you need to make sure the proper story-shape gets into the proper story-place."

"And what's the proper story-shape?" Glitch asked. She frowned, then added, "And that didn't answer any of my questions. Why—?"

The Universe gave Glitch a long stare.

"I'll, uh, I'll go to my room," Glitch said when she mustered the courage. When she fled, the Universe put a jovial hand on Kowareta's shoulder.

"Cheer up," he said. "Seriously, you didn't die."

Girl and universe stared at each other for a moment before Kowareta turned around and silently walked out of the apartment and into the rain.

And once he was certain both girls weren't coming back for a while, The Universe leaned against the kitchen counter and sighed. Of all the girls he could have mistakenly sent to the wrong world, he got the girls who asked the most questions.

Watching the door from the kitchen, The Universe sighed again.

"What did you do?" he asked himself.


	5. Why, Hello There

**The Gray**

**Chapter Five: Why, Hello There.**

For some reason, whenever I type "Duel" or "God Card" I kind of grin, just because I still think the whole card game thing is funny. SERIOUS BUSINESS, of course, but kind of funny.

Also, what's this? We've got a special guest star today? Huh? Well, I guess you'll just have to read to find out who it is. Oh wait, he's comes right after this sentence.

…

Atem opened his eyes and saw nothing but darkness. This isn't how it was supposed to be, he thought. Just a minute ago he'd walked into the door, light shining on his face, his friends and family waiting for his approach. Just a minute before that Yuugi, his partner, and his friends had said goodbye to him. Where had the sun gone?

Atem whipped around when he thought he saw a flash of something white.

And then, because it felt right, he said, "Bakura?"

Atem took a step forward into the darkness.

And then, with great measure, he took another.

The darkness asked, _"Are you afraid?"_

"No," said Atem without flinching, still looking for flashes of white that could have been Bakura.

_"Your friends are not here,"_ the darkness told him.

"They are," Atem told the dark, one hand gently touching his chest where his heart beat beneath his skin, "but you can't see them."

The darkness seemed to think about this.

_"There is one last task you must do before you rest."_

"Bakura," said Atem, who somehow knew.

_"Yes,"_ said the darkness.

"What do I do?"

_"The Pharaoh needs to ask?" _

And then, Atem's feet stepped one in front of the other, because suddenly he knew what to do.

_"You should be afraid," _the darkness told him as though it were some sort of challenger, "_this path will not be a pleasant one. You will face things no humans should."_

"I can't back down," Atem told the dark. "Yuugi wouldn't."

And with that, Atem walked on.

…

"Seto, you're in grave danger."

"Am I?" asks Kaiba looking up from his desk to Ishizu, who stood across from him. She was looking at him with same conviction she had when she'd told him about priests and pharaohs and God Cards. Ishizu ignored the derisive tone in his voice and approached the desk. Kaiba carried on to add:

"I suppose you've seen it then? In some dream or _vision_ made up by that ridiculous necklace of yours? But wait," he added, giving her a know-all smirk, "it's gone. Along with the rest of that garbage."

"Yes," said Ishuzu, "I know you were present when the Millenium Items were destroyed."

Ishizu didn't know how to tell Kaiba that even after she'd given away the Millenium Tauk and it had been destroyed following the Ceremonial Duel that she still had visions. She didn't know how to tell him that she still had visions, in her dreams, clutching her sheets, and waking in sweat, of possible pasts and possible futures—and sometimes she didn't know which was which. Ishizu couldn't even admit to herself which ones she thought were most horrible. She didn't know how to tell him that she could never navigate which nightmare future was closest or which one was impossible. She couldn't describe the dark events, too horrible to repeat, or the twisted things that crawled in them—horrible enough to wish she'd never seen.

The very least of all, Ishizu knew she couldn't tell him that she drew comfort from the one certainty she did have: that if she did not warn those involved in Battle City then they would die.

"You must believe me," continued Ishizu, recalling the many possible nightmare deaths that awaited Seto in his many possible dreadful futures. There were the… _things _that swallowed stars and moved like molasses consuming everything in their wake, or the creatures that gathered on the street corners and talked of genocide like mathematics. She remembered visions filled with lightning, and faceless girls whose hair was either blue or purple crying out in anguish, and the fall of the Kaiba Corporation building, and blazing fires sinking deep into flesh like unforgiving teeth, and at the very last, a darkness that crept over everything like ice that grew across a puddle.

She looked into Kaiba's disbelieving face.

She didn't have the powers of the Tauk to show him her visions to convince him, nor did she have any God Cards or bargaining chips ensure his reluctant or shaky trust. But she had to try.

Before he could say anything, Ishizu said, "You're the only one I know who has ever single-handedly changed his destiny."

Ishizu saw the expression on his face, which clearly said _This again?_ And had to refrain from smiling. It was true he was the only person she'd known to have changed the outcome of his destiny, but it didn't make most of his actions any less predictable. She leaned over his desk, staring him straight in the eyes. He needed to know she was serious.

"I have to believe you can do it again. Because if you can't then it's the end of everything. I know you don't believe me—or will decide not to believe me, but it would be your downfall and your misfortune if you choose to do so. The Tauk is gone, the visions are not. And in order to save your life, I need you to once again pull off the impossible."

Eventually, when she walked out into the rain again, reflecting, she had thought it was odd he'd granted her access to see him personally without some sort of obnoxious strict adherence to appointment-making. She'd wondered, on her way up to see him, if it was because perhaps he'd wanted to see her too and he'd looked almost expectant when she'd walked in—like she were some type of company he didn't mind tolerating, possibly because of the rapport, or connection, or moment of understanding or whatever it was they'd developed on the Duel Tower. Perhaps he'd wondered whether she'd hatched another dueling-related scheme. Unfortunately, Ishizu thought without too much blame, she'd had nothing but what he'd call disappointing, disinteresting news.

However, at this moment, she could only remember his last remarks. The remarks he'd given her after she'd pressed for him to understand and after she'd tried to explain about the creatures and events and...

_Shadows and boogiemen! You expect me to believe that? _

Ishizu shook her head, faintly aware of whispers leaking into her ears from the creatures in the city she couldn't see, and advanced down the sidewalk. She'd now warned Seto whether he liked it or not and must now warn the others. There was no time to waste.

…

Glitch couldn't exactly recall how it happened. She remembered seeing something in The Universe's gaze that made her feel small and human and powerless and she'd gone to her room to hide and have a good cry. Glitch never felt ashamed for crying and didn't understand why other people saw it as a weakness which is why she had no problem with curling up on her strangely genuine handcrafted quilts and crying and choking and sniffling until she felt better.

The crying wasn't the weird part. The weird part came later, in the bathroom. It was embarrassing to admit, so Glitch said it happened when she was brushing her teeth, and not right after she'd taken a shower. And the shower was necessary. After a good cry you had to complete the ritual with a warm shower so that you felt as cleansed as you ought to be. As for what happened afterward…

The truth was…

What really happened was…

Glitch didn't know what the truth was, or what really happened, but what she remembered was reaching for a towel when suddenly the mirror made a polite _ahem_ noise. And _then_ she remembered grabbing for a towel as though her life depended on it, whirling around to face the mirror, a wild expression on her face and seeing…

And seeing, what?

"No way," she said, dropping the towel.

"Oh," said Atem from inside the mirror, whose blush was nearly as red as Glitch's. "Hey, there."

They stared at each other for a moment before, very deliberately, Glitch picked up the towel and wrapped it around herself.

"You're…" started the redhead when it looked like the figment in the mirror was inching away towards the edges, "not supposed to be here. You're gone, aren't you?"

"I…" started Atem. He tried again, "I am."

"The Millennium Items are gone," Glitch told him and for the life of her could never figure out why she did so. In the same way she couldn't say for sure why the shadow behind Bakura stole her breath away (and not romantically either, which was disappointing) she simply didn't know what inside her head made her say those words.

Although Glitch might admit she did some of her best thinking out loud.

"How do you know about the Millennium Items?"

"How on earth did you get into my mirror?"

Atem squirmed. Glitch couldn't help her victory smile. There's something about being able to make a pharaoh with a crazy hairdo dressed in gold and blue and white and intricate trinkets actually squirm while you are dressed in only a bath towel that is immensely satisfying.

And then Glitch said, thinking out loud again, always a little bit unsure of herself "Something's going on, isn't there? Something strange? And it's got something to do with Bakura. I think."

"Bakura! You know him?"

Atem was leaning forward, hands against the edge of the mirror—and suddenly he was leaning _out_ of the mirror, pale and ghostly, and Glitch jumped back, heart pounding, her hands clutching at the towel.

"Sorry," said Atem, returning to the inside of the mirror.

Glitch didn't realize how hard she was breathing until Atem left. He'd tried to reach out to her and calm her down and apologize, but every time he _moved_ Glitch had to _flinch_ and _turn away_. She stood there, backed against the wall, staring at the mirror until she was sure nothing was going to jump out of it.

Even so, she walked nervously into her room and locked the door behind her.

And, again, for the life of her, she couldn't say why, knowing that Atem was all that was supposed to be good and noble and right in this world, she had jumped away.

…

A/N: Thanks for reading. I hope these ellipses work alright as section breakers. If you want to take the time, I would be really happy if you could tell me what you think. I think things start coming together in the next few chapters. I think you can probably already see where _some_ things are leading.


	6. Plink, Toing, Thunk

**The Gray**

**Chapter Six: Plink, Toing, Thunk**

I honestly think my titles are not very related to the chapter material. Oh well.

Kowareta gets to meet someone _really_ special in this chapter. It's… probably not who you expect. Someone has remarked to me that this story, thus far, is rather unromantic—in the sense that nothing good seems to be happening to the OCs. I think this is probably a good thing. Far too many OCs have it too easy. Glitch and Kowareta should _earn_ their places in this fic.

Aquila: Thank you for your review. To be honest, I was worried that no one thought this fic was any good and that the OCs were boring which is why no one commented on the last few chapters. I was going to scrap it. Thanks for telling me how much you enjoyed the fic. It made all the difference.

Oh, and not to forget, thank you to everyone else who reviewed last round too. I'd make a happy smiley emoticon, but FFN would probably eat it.

Anyway, I think this chapter is a little cool, it's one of my favorites.

…

Although Kowareta didn't like to admit it to her friends, she did view crying as a weakness, particularly in herself. She took great strides not to break down in front of people and always tried to attack the root of a problem before she had time to get upset about it. There was, Kowareta would say, no use for tears if you could find something to do about it—and Kowareta always came to decisions easily, even if the decision were merely to wait.

Kowareta enjoyed being in her head. When things came to be too difficult to deal with in person, she liked to follow conclusions in her head. When she felt trapped and enclosed, she took to the streets, even if it were raining and she hadn't brought and umbrella. Kowareta simply liked to haunt spots that were uncommon for ordinary people to go, such as alleyways, rooftops, and scaffolding.

Currently, she found herself in an alleyway, head on knees, trying to appear unnoticeable.

The Universe was very good at getting you to believe that you were smarter and stronger and better than he was. Kowareta thought about that as she sat in the alleyway in the rain. But in the end, The Universe was a _universe._ The purple-haired girl stared at her knees. She'd glared at The Universe with such anger, righteous and livid, she _knew_ they'd died, in _some_ way, in _some_ form, and he was _lying_, but… the way he had looked at her…

...Was much the same way he'd looked at her, with Glitch, this morning. Like she'd been thinking earlier, he was good at getting you to believe you were stronger and smarter or better, but in the end, with eyes that literally stared into your core, that knew every inch of what your mind could possibly be thinking, eyes that were timeless and ageless and so full of steel and death and stars and unthinkable, unknowable doubt…

Kowareta hit her head on the back of the alley wall and sighed to herself.

Once you started to think in circles, you had to stop.

"Human," said a voice that seemed to leak into her ears.

Kowareta shot up onto her feet in an instant and found herself face to face with…

…Well, honestly it looked like a nightdress. She was surrounded on all sides by floating nightdresses.

"We are the Gray," said one of the nightdresses, although Kowareta couldn't tell which.

"What are you—?" Kowareta started, somewhat amused.

"No," interrupted the Gray, "there is no 'you'. 'You' causes shape and form and complication. We are simply we. Your shape, however, makes the equation in this world unbalanced. Your shape must be simplified. The equation must be balanced. Your shape will be the first to be balanced. The rest of the world will be carried through to follow."

"You're simplifying the world?"

"_We _are," said the Gray pointedly.

And then, before she knew it, the nightdresses were on her.

It wasn't like any fight Kowareta had been in. Fights were things that were physical and didn't leave you feeling so cold. Fights were things that were manageable. Kowareta was small and couldn't make much of an impact on her own unless she used her opponent's weight against them, but the Gray had neither weight nor mass and seemed utterly immaterial. Kowareta usually liked to break noses if she had to since it was messy, bloody, sometimes fatal, but generally disarming. Otherwise she liked to avoid fighting entirely.

She felt heavy. The Gray weren't physical and had no weight, but Kowareta felt heavy and was soon on her knees, gasping for air.

_See this mind? _One of them said, and Kowareta was frozen, with growing horror with the sudden understanding that they were in her head. In her body. The voices went on.

_ Entirely too self-aware. Too much thinking inside here. No wonder the balance is upset. _

_ And look at all these memories! Does this creature remember _everything_? There are links and connections all over the place. Far too many shapes in here, far too much everything._

Kowareta felt them move around inside and she started coughing up blood violently and couldn't stop. She couldn't breathe for the blood that accidently fountained out of her nose when she tried. She couldn't control her body either, whose nerves all raged with pain. Her body twitched and jumped uncontrollably and spasmed as she jerked around the alley garbage. Kowareta wasn't sure whether she thought her bones would burst and her heart would pop under the pressure or if she'd choke on her own blood first. Both situations, Kowareta thought humorlessly, were exceedingly likely.

_Look,_ said the Gray inside her. And in her mind's eye she thought she saw Yugio—Duel Monsters cards. They were Duel Monsters cards. Brief flashes of—(Kowareta, feeling demented, changed her thought in midstride)—episodes of Yuugi and Kaiba and Jounnouchi dueling with cards passed through her mind.

_It's this world,_ said the Gray with awe. _These are this world. The Gray can use this._

It was then, coughing, choking, laughing (over the stupid vocabulary switch in her head) that the images came. Kowareta stopped coughing up blood and her body stilled, slumping to the ground.

They were images, memories, _things_. Kowareta felt herself growing small and diminished. _Simplified?_ She wondered. The memories… clung, held tight, grew cold—she was locked in a dark room, she was tied up and her wrists were bloody, she was on the ground with someone on top of her who was hitting her, her brother—

_"No!" _said a voice, soft, sweet, rich, bright. _"Stop!"_

And then there was blackness.

…

_"Kowareta?"_

It was a… silvery voice. Which is stupid, part of Kowareta's mind thought as she followed it through darkness. Silver makes metallic sounds, like _plink_ and _toing_ and _thunk_. It doesn't _have_ a voice, it doesn't have a tongue. Not to mention silver was practically useless besides having pretty, shiny jewelry with big price tags made out of it. Anyway, it was only precious and expensive because other people thought it ought to be.

But if silver could speak, it would sound something like her—like that voice.

Kowareta felt herself pulled through the darkness and into the light

A slight girl hovered above the ground in front of Kowareta, blue-silver hair spilling out around her as if they were wings. She looked worried.

"This is still a dream, isn't it?" Kowareta asked, looking around at sudden appearance of the sand dunes and then down at herself to see her body clothed in a black dress she suspected was the darkness she'd just come through.

She knew it was an obvious question with an obvious answer but sometimes the obvious questions were the right ones to ask. She went on to add, "Except this is a different dream because I was having nightmares… well, not exactly nightmares, just dreams about stuff that happened. This is different."

"Please," said the girl ignoring her question, "I need your help."

Kowareta looked up, very nearly mesmerized.

"You're… Kisara."

Kowareta had been about to say 'beautiful' but couldn't quite manage it and instead stuck to the facts. Some treacherous part of her brain was always trying to break down beauty into its basic components and shove it into the trash out of pure misanthropy-induced spite. Kowareta instinctively distrusted beauty, glamour, sparkle, and gleam.

Kisara looked at Kowareta, delicate eyebrows raised in surprise and soft, white ivory hands were clutched together just below her collarbone. The girl in black nearly cringed at such a delicate image.

"I am," she said, recovering from her surprise. Kowareta suspected she hadn't expected her to know who she was. There was a small, sad smile on her face.

Kowareta folded her arms over her chest.

"_Is_ this a dream? You're dead. I'm not. At least, not again. I'd know."

"It's not exactly a dream," Kisara said gently, sea-blue eyes watching Kowareta's face with concern. "I waited for you."

"Why?"

There was something very calming about Kisara that distressed Kowareta. Her pale feet hovered just inches above the ground and she was wrapped in a simple white dress and her eyes looked as deep as the oceans. Kowareta hated descriptions like that. Descriptions like that gave way to stupid things like fairy tales, romance, and happily ever afters. And there are no happily ever afters. There's just an after.

"I need you to help Seto."

Oh no, oh no, oh no, no way, thought Kowareta. Just talking with Yuugi and Bakura had been stressful enough. There was no way she'd willingly get involved in trying to help out anyone who, throughout an entire anime series, made it extremely clear what he thought of people kind enough to attempt to help him out.

So she said:

"With what? He doesn't need help."

"Truly?"

The silver in the voice was warm, and bright, but disbelieving. It suggested that Kowareta should know better, that Kisara knew she knew better. Silver was made to look pretty and was expensive only because people thought it should be, but they also made highly dangerous compounds out of it, like silver azide or silver fulminate, which exploded.

"Well… no," relented the purple-haired girl sighing inwardly. "I'm sure there's probably some things he needs help with because if anything he needs a really good therapist. But whatever he can't do himself, he just doesn't do. Anyway, it's not like he's in any sort of danger he can't handle himself."

"No danger? Not even from the Gray?"

Images of rain and alleyways and blood crossed Kowareta's mind before other memories did. And then—

Kowareta's mind worked fast.

She scowled darkly.

"They're going to try to destroy the world, aren't they?" she said with sudden certainty. "They say it's simplification, but what it means to them is destruction to us. And they're going to do it using the goddamn card game because _that's_ what they think this world's structure is based on, which it is in some ways. And Kaiba and Yuugi are going to get involved too. And the reason any of this is happening is because _we're_ here. Because _I'm_ here."

_ And I gave them the idea!_ She raged, remembering the Gray shifting through her Yugioh related memories.

"Don't feel guilty," Kisara said, sad eyes on the girl dressed in black.

"I don't," Kowareta said, nearly instantly, who didn't. She ground her teeth. If anything, she felt _responsible. _ Which was _different_.

An ivory-pale hand brushed a lock of hair away from her face, making Kowareta flinch at the sudden contact, and unafraid, Kisara bent forward to say, "Listen."

The girl in black nearly protested, but a look from Kisara and her sea-blue ocean deep eyes stopped her.

"In a few minutes you will wake up. You must find Seto and help him."

"How?"

"In any way you can."

"That's stupid. I—"

_Would have done that anyway,_ Kowareta was going to say before she stopped herself. Instead, she said, "—don't even know how to beat them. And if beating them involves cards then I don't see where my help is needed. Yuugi and Kaiba have the dueling for their souls and the world thing down like a science. Isn't there anything else?"

"No," said Kisara smiling at her sadly. She tapped her own chest lightly, "There is only what's in here."

"That's stu—," Kowareta started to say, but then woke up.

…

A/N: Short chapter this time! I think. Apologies for not being able to stick in more canon characters, but luckily it's Ryou's turn at bat next chapter. I'm already pretty excited about it. I'm not sure when the chapter will get churned out though. I'll finish as quickly as I can. In the meantime, if you like, please tell me what you think.

Mericheri


	7. Reflections Mirrored and Otherwise

**The Gray**

**Chapter seven: Reflections (Mirrored and Otherwise) **

Prooobably spoilers for Kisara. Just FYI. Also would like to mention that the OCs' interpretations of the characters aren't necessarily one hundred percent accurate of how I interpret the characters. (Personally, I love all the characters, but for vastly different reasons.)

…

It was not enough to say that the night was dark. All nights are dark. But moonless nights full of storms and lightning are a different kind of monster when you know a _real_ monster lurks just inside your mirror. All the doors were unlocked for easy escape, all the lights were on, all reflective surfaces were covered, and Ryou… wasn't huddled in a corner hands over his head.

The fact of the matter is that there is living to be done. So what if there were things that lurked in mirrors and puddles and windows?

The lights flickered and Ryou shuddered.

Actually, the truth was that there was dinner to be made and it had been a while since he'd last made stir-fry. Or had any other meal that hadn't been microwaved or baked in an oven for only thirty minutes. Ryou lived by himself and could technically cook, but it was usually easier not having to think about it.

When the first lamp flickered out, he turned off the stove. When the ceiling lights went, he slipped on the oven mitts. And when he stood in complete darkness, a door creaked open from somewhere and laughter crawled into his ears like worms wriggling through grave dust, he frowned.

_Host_, said the voice that wasn't his, the kind of voice that neither age nor light had touched. It came from behind him, just over his shoulder like it was reaching out to him in the dark.

And then it happened, just like some sort of spark. Without even thinking, Ryou whirled around and smashed the frying pan into… something. A screaming, hissing, writhing something that looked _just like him_. That _always_ looked just like him. Except now it probably had burn marks on its face. His face. Whatever.

"Get out!" Ryou shouted at it holding the pan like a bat.

The anger was new. Fear he was used to. He'd sacrificed himself for his friends for fear of their safety, and kept away for their safety. He'd feared hurting others, and he feared being hurt. But the anger that bubbled up in him now was new, and different. He trembled.

The lights flickered on.

The writhing thing on the floor with his face just laughed as it clutched its head.

"What…" it said—and there was a difference between how it was speaking now, with real words, instead of words that instantly flowed into his head and plagued his mind. "What is this?" it continued, laughing.

"Just," started Ryou, frying pan poised to be swung wildly, "get out. You take too much. You've _taken_ too much."

The thing that wasn't him looked up, a crooked, open smile on its face, like a scythe. Ryou could almost swear he could see fangs. The thing struggled to get to its feet.

"Got it all back then?" it asked as though it knew him. "Those things that are precious to you?"

Ryou swung the pan again and the Spirit of the Ring crumpled to the floor.

"Did you?" it croaked, bleeding on his floor. "Are you so—ngh, my head—_capable_ and _clever_ without me? So _strong_ you can bash _nightmares_? Are you like that now? Heh heh…"

Ryou watched it carefully.

"No," the Spirit of the Ring added, looking up at him, clutching its head while blood trickled down its face. "I'll tell you what you are. You're always the pawn, never the player. Heh."

"I'll hit you again," Ryou told him levelly. His hands clutched the pan tighter.

"Look at this place," it said, looking around. "No one's been here in weeks but you. No _friends_, no _family_. I can tell. You're no more a player now than when you were with me."

Ryou raised the pan, a quiet rage growing inside him. He remembered the fear that came with being the tool that the Spirit of the Ring. He remembered the terrifying blank periods of time, the times he woke up not knowing where he was, how he got there, or what he'd done. What he hated the most though, was that he'd been unable to do anything. He hated that he saw Yuugi getting along with and becoming stronger and making friends with his Spirit by his side and that this _thing_ simply overwhelmed his entire consciousness and he could do nothing but sit in the dark wondering who would get hurt _this_ time—himself, or his friends.

It was the way this thing made him feel, helpless, isolated, and afraid, that made Ryou so angry.

The Spirit of the Ring looked up at him.

"I will leave," it told him, perhaps sensing the rage behind Ryou. It smiled, a haunted, crooked smile. "As if I were never here."

There was a pause.

"…But I'll be _back_. And you'll be with me again."

And then it was gone almost as if it had never been there. But it had been, Ryou reflected, picking pieces of vegetable off the floor and wondering how best to clean up the blood stains.

In the back of his head, Ryou was wondering what to do _now_.

…

She woke up to rain. Her clothes were a mess and probably beyond repair. Rubbing her eye, she sat up and discovered she'd been lying in a mud puddle. She blinked then cried. She didn't even know why. When she was finished, Kowareta stood up and walked, for lack of a better word, home.

…

Getting ready for school in the morning was a quiet affair. After all the nightmares, terrors, storms, and monsters, there is always the morning to come.

Kowareta reflected as she buttoned up her jacket. The silver voice still rang softly in her head. I don't even like Kisara, Kowareta thought, looking at the muddied discarded clothes on the floor. She melts at the sight of conflict, does nothing for herself, relies far too much on others and—

—And died for the one she loved.

And housed a _god _in her small, thin frame.

The purple-haired girl sat on the floor and sighed. She grabbed a boot. She couldn't possibly go to school in her still-mud-caked school shoes.

Kowareta didn't even like Priest Seto. She certainly liked Kaiba, although definitely not the ancient Egyptian counterpart. But Kisara had _died_ for him because she _loved_ him. Kowareta couldn't forgive such a selfless act. People should have goals and skills and tenacity. You should fight and plan and be clever. Dying was _easy._ Anyone could do it. _Anyone_ could sacrifice their life, but not everyone could keep it and use it to overcome what would otherwise take that life. Death was—

...Ultimate.

And stupid!

...But sad.

Kowareta finally finished lacing up her boots. She frowned at them. Dying for someone you loved was romantic and beautiful and meaningful and brave and _stupid_.

…But sad. Very sad. And Kisara was this small, neglected, useless girl who tried really hard and did what she thought was right and true. She reached out to the stars never thinking she might be burned and opened her heart, never knowing she might be hurt. Or maybe she did know but did it _anyway_.

And it was that kind of soppy, quixotic mindset that set Kowareta's teeth on edge for reasons she didn't want to think about.

She stood up.

And sighed.

Glitch had an equally reflective morning. Possibly doubly reflective, as she was staring at herself in the mirror. She inspected her big nose.

Being seen naked by a mirror-haunting Atem was embarrassing enough, but she couldn't find a way to explain the dark fear she felt when he came out of the mirror. On a good day she didn't like Atem very much. She thought he was bossy and didactic and little Yuugi was the better Yuugi. Atem was supposed to be good and noble and even though Glitch didn't think he was when you got down to it, he meant _a lot_ of things to the people around him, good things. And even though she didn't like him very much, she didn't think that he was _scary_ or _fearsome_.

Although he could be. He very well could be. Especially if you've read the manga like she had.

Atem acted more like a wrathful god than a human being at the best of times, and while he could be kind, Glitch felt it was more out of principle than empathy. But he did do what was right, and he defended people who couldn't defend themselves, and he erred more or less to the side of good than anything else, so why…?

"Are you ready to go?" the Universe asked the girls. Without even bothering to get an answer, the Universe shoved bento boxes into their hands and pushed them out the door. He waved at them.

"Have fun!"

Outside, the girls looked at each other as if assessing the other and then, without a word, started walking to school.

…

"Are you guys alright?" Yuugi was asking. He turned to Kowareta. "You look like you were in a fight."

"I didn't win," Kowareta told him flapping a hand, wondering why Glitch refused to look at him. "Although to be honest, I usually don't."

"Oh," said Yuugi, looking for something to say after that.

Classes hadn't started yet and it was early enough that several students still weren't inside the classroom, but Yuugi, Ryou (who looked spooked, like he'd been up all night with a knife under his pillow), and the girls sat close to each other and were talking.

"I don't know any Japanese," Glitch said suddenly in what was probably what she meant to say to herself, but aloud.

"But you're speaking it now," Ryou told her.

"She means she can't read it," Kowareta said, inspecting her nail-bitten hand.

"Oh. Well, I'm sure that you could get a tutor or—"

Glitch stood up from her desk and started hurrying out the door. She was crying.

"I'm sorry. I just. This. I can't."

Just as Kowareta was about to get up, Ryou stopped her.

"I'll talk to her. I'll _do_ something."

Kowareta frowned, but relented when she saw the determined look in Ryou's eye. She watched as he went to follow after Glitch.

"Pop-up picture books," Kowareta said to herself. "Fill in the spaces."

"What?" Yuugi asked.

The purple-haired girl shook her head slowly, "Nevermind. But Yuugi… can I ask you a question?"

"Is it about my hair?"

"How could you tell?"


End file.
